No problem at all, except contest winners would likely have to pay a hefty amount in duties in order to accept the item. I had this issue shipping some $65 headphones to a friend in Canada. They had to pay something like $50 to get the item from the post office.Reply

The rules and regulations for that country then apply, which causes legal issues and headaches. Each state/area/country has its own rules and regs, and thus if the rules and regs of the state of the winner (as well as the origin of the contest) apply. Some contests ignore this of course, but take Rhode Island for example:

"In the United States, every state establishes their own set of rules for contests. Most states have the same basic rules, so most national contests are valid. Rhode Island is unique because the state law actually requires the company to file a legal statement before it can run a contest in that state. The statute, Section 11-50-1 of Rhode Island General Laws, reads:

"Any person, firm, or corporation proposing to engage in any game, contest, or other promotion or advertising scheme or plan in which a retail establishment offers the opportunity to receive gifts, prizes, or gratuities, as determined by chance, in order to promote its retail business, where the total announced value of the prizes offered to the general public is in excess of five hundred dollars ($500), must file a statement with the secretary of state."

The statute then details exactly what information must be included in the filed statement. In addition, the law requires the company pay a $150 filing fee. If a company runs a contest in Rhode Island, and fails to file a statement correctly, the company is actually guilty of a criminal misdemeanor!

For companies that want to run national contests, the filing fee alone means it's not really worthwhile to run the contest in Rhode Island, which has a fairly small population. When you add to that the hassle of researching Rhode Island law in order to file the statement correctly, very few national companies are going to bother. The term "retail establishment" is fairly vague, so it's not really clear if the law would apply to a non-retail Web site. It probably does, however, and for most sites, it's not worth the time to try to contact the state of Rhode Island secretary of state to find out."

That's one state in the US. Now hire a lawyer to find out whether similar situations exist in each one of the countries in the world, then break it down further to different areas which are under different jurisdictions. If certain contests were not area limited, then there'd be no contests at all.

This also means that phrases like "Subject to all applicable federal, state, and local laws and regulations." are quite important.

--> These are personal comments btw. I'm based in the UK, so I also can't enter a lot of FB contests for example.Reply

You in UK have great weather and free health care benefits. I am sick of heat and sunshine in SoCal. I can exchange weather and health care with a "chance to enter a content" in a heartbeat. So don't feel bad, enjoy what you have.Reply

This would be a perfect system core to perpetuate my house's hand-me-down system. Would effectively upgrade half a dozen computers, though I'm kinda iffy about Haswell's IHS and thermal paste quality. Thinking it might be a downgrade from my 5GHz 2500K!Reply

This would be a nice excuse to upgrade. After doing a Haswell build for a friend that refuses to OC, I'd like to get my hands on one. I love Gigabyte boards so this would be the first step to awesome.Reply

You know, I honest don't know which one I would get. The Sniper has more PCIe vs the PCI on the OC board, but the audio features seem kind of gimmicky and then of course overclocking support goes down... Tough choice.Reply

I think this is my first comment :)This is a smart move on Gigabytes' part. Good product chasing ASUS juggernaut.Anand, any open thoughts on why Mobo companies document BIOS parameters so abysmally? Afraid of being wrong? Don't understand the parameter themselves (ie came from Intel etc.)? Don't want the extra support load from an informed customer base.KUTGW!!!Reply

Hmmm! What to do? For years now I've only had 1 computer (DIY) at a time. I could now build a second one to use one for gaming and one for viewing videos on the TV. But which one? Decisions, decisionms,and decisions.Reply

Top of the line board for a top-of-the-line processor (hey, I work for a certain semi company!). I want to thank you, Anand, for the great coverage you've been giving our products over the years. I learn more from you than I do from our own spec sheets.Reply

I have never used a Gigabyte mobo before and probably won't anytime soon because I never win drawings like this. I was planning on skipping Haswell for the next iteration, though I'd definitely upgrade my system/cpu if I won either of these boards. Reply

Very disappointing that this yet another giveaway open to US residents only. You just don;t seem to care about your loyal overseas readers. I'm sure a few years ago you wrote you would try and do something for the rest of us!Reply

I also have the eAtx z77 sniper. I consider the sniper boards to be some of the best boards I prefer them over ASUS rog maximus boards. I also don't expect to win but I do advise people looking for a good board to look at the snipers from gigabyte.Reply

I'd want to take a BIG BITE, no... a GIGA BYTE out of the next gen processor. HAS anyone been able to get the...... ok I'm stopping this right now. Previous user tempted me to try to make it work.. but failed.. oh WELL.Reply

I always buy Gigabyte mobos, but for now have been staying with the Z77 platform. Winning one of these would give me an incentive to re-evaluate our 6 desktops -- all in beautiful Lian Li cases with Samsung 840 Pro SSD boot drives and ATI 79xx cards.Reply

Either would be perfect start on replacing my 5 year old gaming laptop. It has put up a long good fight, but the gaming industry has finally caught up to its specs. It'll be a sad day when I let her go.Reply

Thank you Anand for keeping anandtech.com a high quality site. Maybe one day instead of written articles we could just watch a 20 minute video review for each subject :) And written article can supplement the video. Just an idea. Looking forward to the giveaway :)Reply

Excellent timing! I went with ASRock (the Extreme4) for my Haswell motherboard, and I've been regretting it this entire time. The board is extremely unstable in the BIOS (freezes often) and I even ran into a hard lock-up last night when Speedfan tried to access a temperature diode. I went with Gigabyte for my Sandy Bridge days (GA-P67-UD3P), but for some reason, I decided to switch things up.

(Hopefully this didn't get submitted already... I hit submit and nothing happened!)Reply

Why do you always limit the giveaways to US residents only, I fail to understand. This is a global site (technology portal...?) and I am very much upset on this part more so because it is a strong case of regional / international discrimination. If your sponsors are not interested beyond the US borders, I think I need to take it up with all the user groups here in Mumbai and India as a whole.Reply